visualizing connectedness

This is awesome.

I've heard and noticed myself that the bible is the best commentary on itself. There are connections all over the place, and one part isn't quite complete without the other parts. If you read much of the the new testament (the latter part of the book), it doesn't make any sense without understanding the old testament (the first part, pre-jesus' birth)... and the OT is incomplete without Jesus. But there are prophecies before and references after, and names and quotes and the cultural connections and references that are just insanely connected throughout the whole thing. And reading it, you tend to notice these things. Studying it, you notice more. And listening to very smart scholars, you hear that they have noticed even more than you remotely started to see.

I was telling a friend recently that Genesis makes more sense with knowledge of Revelation (the first and last books of the Bible), while they're seemingly so different. But everything in between stitches together this narrative that, when you see the whole picture, is really all connected even though there seem to be such stark differences between temple laws involving animal sacrifice in in Leviticus and the way the community of believers share everything with one another in the book of Acts.

I read Rob Bell's book Sex God recently. And I loved it. I shared it with a few of my girlfriends here in Lander. Overall, we agreed it's more about connectedness than sex. But sex is really about connectedness, which is part of Rob's point in the book. He frequently says this is really about that. I like that it was a quick read, incredibly interesting, and... I loved that the text was set in a beautiful sanserif type and tended to follow a format that allowed certain lines to be broken away from paragraphs.

So you'd read them alone.

As their own statement.

And it sinks in a little deeper. With a little more of a breath between sentences, phrases, and thoughts.

Perhaps it was the experience of reading it that helped me enjoy the concept of connectedness so much. Rather than just word after word stitching together concepts, I was more engaged with the content.

But it was still just a book.

About being connected.